So i discovered that the song playing in FNAF movie at showtime is named “Talking in Your Sleep” so i decided to search up the release date and you guessed it 1983 THE BITE OF 83
Full Series:
The grand finale is here. We've covered the could've beens, and the teams in the mushy middle between bridesmaid and dynasty. However, ten teams have achieved true Dynasty status; which I define as having won three championships or more in six seasons or fewer.
Sometimes, this standard for a Dynasty can encounter stress tests. For example, the Pittsburgh Penguins won three Stanley Cups in
nine seasons, so they would get denied the Dynasty title despite a pretty impressive run of success in the post-lockout era, including but not limited to those three Cups. On the other side of the coin, the San Francisco Giants won three World Series in five years, but their degree of success in surrounding seasons was so sparse that calling them a true
Dynasty can feel weird.
However, I don't get a similar feeling when I look at basketball runs of excellence. All ten of the true Dynasties on this list belong, in my opinion; a Bill Simmons-type will exclude several of them, but only by applying a very strict standard. And when we look at the Dynastenders, it's hard to count any of them as Dynasties, as none had three titles to their name. The closest you would probably get would be the Heatles (the #1 Dynastender) or the Bad Boy Pistons (#6), but in both cases I think the consensus would be that calling them a proper dynasty is a stretch.
10. Indiana Pacers, 1969-1975
Head Coach: Slick Leonard
Key Players: Roger Brow, Mel Daniels, George McGinnis, Freddie Lewis, Bob Netolicky, Billy Knight
Dynasty Rankings: 9th in Seasons (7), 10th in Points (19.28), 10th in adjusted Championships (1.79), 10th in adjusted Finals appearances (2.97), 10th in win% (.601), 9th in playoff win% (.598), 10th in adjusted Net Rating (+2.4), 10th in Top 5 aNR (+3.0)
Total z-score: -0.48
Seeing “Pacers” and “dynasty” in the same sentence might be jarring, given that Indiana has zero NBA titles to their name. They do, however, have three
ABA titles, which is what earns them a spot on this list.
You could dispute whether to include the ABA, but once I made that decision, it's clear that the Pacers are a Dynasty. They won three titles in four years, and added two additional Finals appearances to boot.
While that’s a clear dynasty, though, there’s a few marks against them which bury them well below the rest of the Dynasties I’m ranking, even though my system includes no penalty for being an ABA team. Indiana often spent too long dispatching teams for my system (and it’s playoff win % element)’s liking, including combining for only an 18-17 playoff record during their two Finals losses. Their regular seasons included only two seasons which would give them dynasty points in their own right (‘70 and ‘71), and none which meet the 60-win pace requirement for the top “tier” in my system. In addition, the ABA only had 10-11 teams during this Dynasty, which means every championship and finals appearance is discounted accordingly (they each count about 60% of a corresponding season in the 30-team era).
The Pacers are the clear odd-man out in this Dynasty club; if we bunched up Dynasties, Dynastenders and Bridesmaids into one list, Indiana would rank 36th. However, the nine teams we’re about to cover need no arbitrary “dividers” to set themselves apart. These nine teams are the top nine on the overall list as well, followed by the Heatles, ‘70s Bucks and Dr. J Sixers at 10th-12th, and the Bridesmaid Jazz at 13. Truly, we’re entering the area where the best of the best reside.
9. Minneapolis Lakers, 1949-1954
Head Coach: John Kundla
Key Players: George Mikan, Vern Mikkelsen, Jim Pollard, Slater Martin
Dynasty Rankings: 10th in Seasons (6), 9th in Points (27.22), 7th in adjusted Championships (3.09), 9th in adjusted Finals appearances (3.09), 7th in win% (.676), 1st in playoff win% (.716), 4th in adjusted Net Rating (+5.6), 8th in Top 5 aNR (+6.1)
Total z-score: 0.53
If you've seen somebody mock what the NBA looked like in the '60s, there's a chance that they're actually talking about the
very beginning of the NBA, which is what these Lakers occupy.
Nevertheless, it was never a guarantee that one team would dominate early on, and Mikan and co.'s dominance is very impressive indeed. Averaging a .716 win percentage across six playoff runs is absurd. For reference, the Bucks are going to finish with the best record in the NBA this season with about the same record. And these Lakers did that in the
playoffs, and over six separate playoff runs at that.
Even when you include adjustments for the number of teams in the league, Minneapolis' five titles get reduced to three, still a dynasty-caliber number. If the Mikan Lakers wanted to challenge the teams above, they'd have to be more dominant in the regular season, or last longer and win even more championships. But as it is, my system still considers their run to be more impressive than any Dynastender (including the Heatles, Bad Boys, Dirks, etc.)
8. Los Angeles Lakers, 1995-2004
Head Coach: Del Harris, Phil Jackson
Key Players: Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, Eddie Jones, Robert Horry, Nick Van Exel, Elden Campbell, Vlade Divac, Cedric Ceballos, Glen Rice, Gary Payton
Dynasty Rankings: 6th-7th in Seasons (10), 7th in Points (35), 8th in adjusted Championships (2.95), 8th in adjusted Finals appearances (3.93), 6th in win% (.680), 8th in playoff win% (.618), 8th in adjusted Net Rating (+4.7), 7th in Top 5 aNR (+6.6)
Total z-score: 0.63
The 1994-95 Lakers were an unimpressive team who allowed more points than they scored, but they pulled out a first round series against the playoff-challenged SuperSonics, and earned a dynasty point in so doing. The '96 team was better in the regular season, earning point number two.
However, that's of course not what you went to this entry for. Shaquille O'Neal joined the team the next season, and he along with the developing Kobe Bryant would vault this team into Dynastic territory. After a playoff funk that lasted for a few years, the team eventually won three straight titles, something only three other teams on this list can boast, and looked like they'd win a fourth before getting upset by the (#5 Dynastender) Pistons. Then Shaq left, and began a run of mediocrity well long enough to cut this run off from the Pau Gasol era we discussed on the Dynastender list.
Of this threepeat, it's notorious that 2002 is a footnote title (perhaps the largest footnote in NBA history), due to the incredibly favorable officiating that the Lakers received in a must-win Game 6 of the conference finals. The Lakers won by four points (ahead by one before the Kings were forced to foul), and
Roland Beech’s analysis concludes that the Lakers gained 6 net points’ worth of expected value due to incorrect or doubtful officiating decisions, and that's without accounting for the considerable foul trouble implications of said decisions. Portland fans may argue that 2000 belongs in a similar conversation, what with a huge free-throw disparity at the end of that WCF Game 7. Of course, there are counterarguments, like that free-throw disparities don't tell the whole story, or that the refs went Sacramento's way in Game 5, or that some might not believe in putting footnotes on championships at all. However, you can't honestly look at this Lakers run without thinking about what happened with the Kings series, especially if you're in Sacramento.
The one title you can’t argue, though, is 2001, where Shaqobe and co. famously kicked an unfathomable amount of ass in the playoffs. They never lost a postseason game in regulation, something no other team in NBA history can boast, and their average point differential of +12.75 in the second season is better than any team’s total in the first.
A major factor hurting this Dynasty is that it isn’t attached to the later Lakers era from ‘08 to ‘12. The reason is that in the three years from ‘05 to ‘07, the Lakers missed the playoffs once and lost in the first round twice. They also didn’t have a 50-win season in that span, actually finishing with a total record under .500. That, plus the common-sense angle that Shaq left to coincide with all of this, is a pretty clear argument for why this chapter ended in 2004, despite Kobe’s (and Phil Jackson’s) presence in a later one.
7. Golden State Warriors, 2013-present
Head Coach: Mark Jackson, Steve Kerr
Key Players: Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, Kevin Durant, David Lee
Dynasty Rankings: 6th-7th in Seasons (10), 8th in Points (31), 5th-6th in adjusted Championships (4), 4th in adjusted Finals appearances (6), 8th in win% (.665), 2nd in playoff win% (.699), 6th in adjusted Net Rating (+4.9), 3rd in Top 5 aNR (+8.8)
Total z-score: 0.92
After the previous two Laker dynasties comes our next tier, in which the NBA’s reigning Dynasty finds itself. The Warriors, particularly in their Finals streak, dazzlingly dominated in shooting efficiency. And unlike their predecessors in the Seven Seconds or Less Suns who did similarly, Golden State supplemented this with solid defensive performances.
The story of this Dynasty, in many ways, is a story of footnotes; largely absence-related ones, some of which have helped the Warriors, some of which have hurt them. Many would criticize my references to footnotes in this series, and say you should just take every result at face value; but with the Warriors, you almost can’t avoid these elephants in the room. Let's talk about them one by one.
- I don't care that Mike Conley was injured in 2015. That might have been a footnote argument you gave weight to at the time, if you believed in some sort of "jump shooting teams don't win championships" narrative, or if you thought the Warriors were too inexperienced to win in the playoffs. However, everything the Warriors accomplished from there on out should have cut those arguments at the knees.
- The ‘15 Finals are a different story, and it's hard to argue that there isn't at least a moderate footnote in that regard. The Cavs did put up a fight without Kyrie Irving or Kevin Love, which does suggest that the Warriors could have been vulnerable to a team who had stayed healthier.However, when I see people discuss the concrete events of the series, I often find a kind of cherry-picking argument rear its ugly head. The Cavs barely lost Game 1 in which Kyrie got injured, fans say, and they won Games 2 and 3. Therefore, a healthy Cavs may well have taken a 3-0 series lead! And then they’d definitely win the series, right? The problem with this argument is that it selectively decides to include the actual events of Games 1-3, while suspiciously leaving out the actual events of Games 4-6, where the Warriors left little room for doubt in three relatively convincing wins.
- Draymond’s 2016 suspension was his own dang fault. No footnote.
- A dirty play injured Kawhi Leonard when the Spurs had a big lead in their 2017 Game 1 against GSW. Considering how good those Spurs were, it's hard to deny at least some footnote status, although I'll give the Warriors a large degree of benefit of the doubt, given that the '17 Warriors are my pick for the best team in NBA history.
- Chris Paul was injured in Games 6 and 7 in 2018, and the Warriors got the benefit of some calls in Game 7. The Rockets infamously collapsed behind the arc, of course, but you can't separate that from either of the previous two factors.
- I strongly believe in including 2020 and (especially) 2021 when we talk about the Warriors' overall numbers. In my opinion, you should either stop the Dynasty at 2019, and say that what's happened since is a "postscript" to the main run, or you should extend things to '22, but count the good with the bad along the way. To "have one's cake and eat it too" by including '22 but not '20 and '21 comes off to me as cherry picking, and essentially saying "this team was really great except when they weren't". Part of the course of maintaining a dynasty is navigating injury risk. Many a-team would either have appeared in this series, or achieved a higher ranking, if their stars stayed healthy for longer. An exceptional group of teams were able to stay healthy for an impressive amount of time (or if they didn't, they managed to stay competitive anyway), and we'll be celebrating a few such teams as we move through the list. But the Warriors' stars didn't stay consistently healthy, and as a consequence they have '20 and '21 as blemishes on their record. Besides, their up and down '23 suggests that '21, at least, might be more of the norm than the exception when it comes to life after Durant. Although, of course, the jury is still out in that regard.
6. Boston Celtics, 1980-1988
Head Coach: Bill Fitch, K.C. Jones
Key Players: Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, Cedric Maxwell, Danny Ainge, Dennis Johnson, Tiny Archibald
Dynasty Rankings: 8th in Seasons (9), 6th in Points (38.91), 9th in adjusted Championships (2.63), 7th in adjusted Finals appearances (4.38), 1st in win% (.745), 7th in playoff win% (.619), 2nd in adjusted Net Rating (+6.5), 5th in Top 5 aNR (+7.05)
Total z-score: 1.01
Some people would dispute that Larry Bird's Celtics are a Dynasty, and to be honest, for a time I agreed with them. It does feel a little weird to have two coincidental Dynasties (although, as we'll get to later, that's inevitable), and I originally planned on leaving these guys out (either because I planned for "3 in 5" rather than "3 in 6" to be the standard, or because I didn't have a set standard, I forget). However, had I done that, looking over these numbers it wouldn't feel right. The '80s Celtics would be
far and away the greatest Dynastender of all time; the difference between them and the Heatles would be, by my system, roughly equivalent to the difference between the Heat and LeBron's second Cleveland stint, which isn't even in the top 10 of Dynastenders. To paraphrase Sesame Street, one of those teams would not have been like the others. One of those teams wouldn't have belonged.
Instead, Bird and co. belong squarely among the true Dynasties in NBA history, in large part due to their ludicrous domination of the regular season. In the nine seasons of this run, the Celtics won 60 games six times, led the league in net rating five times, and never finished below 3rd in net rating or with fewer than 56 wins. Fans might care more or less about regular season numbers after the fact, but they represent how good a team was on a day-to-day level. If you were following the NBA in the '80s, there's a strong chance you were watching the Celtics win any given game, or that you were impressed at their place in the standings when perusing the newspaper.
And while these Celtics "only" won three championships, they certainly had additional opportunities. They outscored the Sixers in the '82 conference finals, but lost in seven. The disparity was caused in large part by the
Mother’s Day Massacre in which Boston took Game 1 in a blowout. Boston also lost the '85 Finals after a more famous blowout Game 1 win, although the Lakers also made that deficit up in the aggregate tally.
In all, the Celtics were an incredible regular-season team, but they didn't last quite long enough, or win quite enough championships to crack what ends up being a rather distinct top five.
5. LeBron and Friends, 2006-2020(?)
Head Coach: Mike Brown, Erik Spoelstra, David Blatt, Tyronn Lue, Luke Walton, Frank Vogel
Key Players: LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Kevin Love, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Tristan Thompson, Anderson Varejao, Kyrie Irving, Mo Williams, Anthony Davis
Dynasty Rankings: 2nd in Seasons (15), 3rd in Points (57), 5th-6th in adjusted Championships (4), 1st in adjusted Finals appearances (10), 9th in win% (.662), 5th in playoff win% (.662), 9th in adjusted Net Rating (+4.4), 4th in Top 5 aNR (+7.5)
Total z-score: 1.59
Decades ago, sports players fought for their rights to choose the organization that employs them, just like workers in any other profession. Much to the chagrin of some, LeBron James has used this right on multiple occasions, and has had the power to instantly transform teams into top championship contenders. This has led me to consider LeBron's career as a Dynasty ('12, '13 and '16 satisfies the "3 in 6" condition) alongside franchise-based ones.
We've basically talked about this Dynasty already, but piecemeal. It started in 2006, when LeBron's Cavaliers won 50 games and a playoff round, beginning the #11 Bridesmaid in this series. Then came the Decision and the #1 Dynastender in the Heatles. Then came LeBron's homecoming and the formation of yet another Dynastender in Cleveland. The one chapter of this Dynasty that hasn't independently qualified for the list is James’ stint in Los Angeles, where the ‘20 championship has no other qualifying season surrounding it (yet).
And when the LeBron dynasty is stacked up with the rest, it comes out very impressively indeed. 10 Finals appearances in the 30-team era is absolutely ridiculous; I don't care how weak the East used to be. We'll probably never see a player do that again in our lifetimes, short of a radical format change that would create more than one season per year. The juxtaposition between LeBron's nearly identical regular- and post- season win percentages in this run are illuminating, as his teams (particularly in his second Cleveland run) often stayed under the radar in the RS only to slam their feet on the gas in the second season.
The gap between number 5 all the way up to number three is
extremely close, so all three of these next entries are basically interchangeable. LeBron ends up at #5, but he easily could've ended up at #3 with slightly different methodological decisions.
After a disappointing '21 and a terrible '22, it sure looked as if this LeBron dynasty was going to be slammed shut, and that 2020 would be its fairytale (or mickey mouse, depending on your perspective) ending. But we never saw LeBron or the dynasty die on screen, now did we? And indeed, the Lakers have closed out the regular season in impressive fashion, and appear to have about as strong of a chance as anybody in a messy Western Conference. If the Lakers make it back to the Finals in '23, LeBron's Dynasty will live on. If not, it will finally be over, but what a run it will have been.
4. Los Angeles Lakers, 1979-1991
Head Coach: Jerry West, Paul Westhead, Pat Riley, Mike Dunleavy
Key Players: Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy, Byron Scott, Jamaal Wilkes, Michael Cooper, A.C. Green, Norm Nixon, Vlade Divac, Sam Perkins
Dynasty Rankings: 3rd-4th in Seasons (13), 4th in Points (54.08), 4th in adjusted Championships (4.36), 2nd in adjusted Finals appearances (7.97), 2nd in win% (.712), 4th in playoff win% (.667), 5th in adjusted Net Rating (+5.3), 6th in Top 5 aNR (+7.0)
Total z-score: 1.60
When Kevin Pelton did an
interview about his own dynasty-ranking system, it was observed that the Showtime Lakers stay weirdly under the radar when talking about Dynasties, in that their incredibly impressive accomplishments aren't highlighted very much. And that's a shame, because this era of Laker basketball was impressive indeed.
The Lakers dominated the western conference for a whole decade; bracketing aside the hanger-on ‘79 season which barely qualified, this team never fell below 54 wins during their run, made a remarkable nine Finals appearances in 12 tries, and were the West’s #1 seed nine consecutive times. The statistical profile of this run is very well-rounded; this is one of two Dynasties on the list which is top-six in
every category of my system. This run has longevity, lasting from just after the merger to the dawn of the Bulls’ dynasty, and completely enveloping their rival Celtics’ Dynasty to boot. This run has regular-season success, with the aforementioned run of 1-seeds, as well as a four-year stay in the 60-win club. And this run had postseason success, scoring well among Dynasties for both championships, playoff win percentage, and (especially) Finals appearances.
It's possible that this team could've kept winning even more, and secured distance between themselves and this 3-5 pack on the list, if Magic didn't retire when he did.
3. Boston Celtics, 1957-1969
Head Coach: Red Auerbach, Bill Russell
Key Players: Bill Russell, Sam Jones, Tom Heinsohn, John Havlicek, Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman, Tom Sanders, Bailey Howell, Frank Ramsay, Don Nelson
Dynasty Rankings: 3rd-4th in Seasons (13), 2nd in Points (59.36), 1st in adjusted Championships (6.12), 3rd in adjusted Finals appearances (6.64), 4th in win% (.705), 6th in playoff win% (.647), 7th in adjusted Net Rating (+4.8), 9th in Top 5 aNR (+5.8)
Total z-score: 1.60
These lads won
eight effing titles in a row. That’s a pretty incredible feat, and something that’s generally the first thing mentioned (or close) when discussing this dynasty.
Yes, it’s true that there were 8-9 teams in the league during the streak, but that doesn’t make an eight-peat some sort of trivial task. To compare across sports: for 60 seasons, MLB only had eight teams per league, and nobody won eight straight pennants (the Yankees’ five straight from 1949 to ‘53 is the longest streak). For 26 seasons, the NHL had
six franchises, and three of them barely counted as real teams. Once again, the longest Stanley Cup streak was five (Montreal from 1956 to ‘60). There's no iron law of sports that says if there's eight teams in a league, you're going to have eight-peats all over the place.
On the other hand, Nate Silver
makes a decent point that if you separated the current NBA into 10-team “leagues”, you’d also have seen some gaudy numbers (like the Showtime Lakers also winning eight straight titles). As someone who’s ranking the Celtics here, I’m not too threatened by this exercise, as the other teams putting up ridiculous numbers of hypothetical championships are mostly in this top-five tier (the Showtime Lakers, the Spurs, LeBron).
As a side note, that Silver article might have helped inspire my “adjusted championships” metric. I take a middle approach between flatly dividing titles based on the number of teams (what Nate does at another point in the article) vs. counting every title equally, by taking the
square root of 30 divided by teams in the league, and dividing by that. It brings the Russell Celtics to just over 6 championships, which I think makes some intuitive sense; giving them credit for only 3.4 championships feels a little low based on the nature of their accomplishment.
Another point that Silver makes, and that also works against the Celtics' ranking, is that their domination of the field sometimes left some to be desired. That feels silly to say given all of their championships, but there were
lots of Game 7s they had to play, which ends up dropping them to #6 in the playoff win percentage leaderboard for Dynasties. Compare to the Mikan Lakers from before, who often dispatched opponents with little pushback, while the Celtics sometimes had to sweat it out until Havlicek stole the ball. Boston's relatively weak top-5 aNR also reflects a lack of truly rarified individual seasons. Unlike a Warriors or Bulls dynasty who put up all-time great regular seasons on multiple occasions, the Russell Celtics’ highest aNR was +6.25 (in ‘62), which is lower than the
average numbers for the Bulls and the Bird Celtics. The Celtics didn’t win by sheer dominance, as much as by an incredible ability to pull out close and crucial games.
2. Chicago Bulls, 1988-1998
Head Coach: Doug Collins, Phil Jackson
Key Players:
Michaeljordanscottiepippendennisrodmantonikucoc, Horace Grant, Steve Kerr, B.J. Armstrong, John Paxson, Ron Harper
Dynasty Rankings: 5th in Seasons (11), 5th in Points (51), 2nd in adjusted Championships (5.8), 6th in adjusted Finals appearances (5.8), 3rd in win% (.712), 3rd in playoff win% (.693), 1st in adjusted Net Rating (+6.9), 1st in Top 5 aNR (+10.5)
Total z-score: 1.79
These Bulls need no introduction; they're the most fabled team in NBA history. Numerous moments of theirs (and of Michael Jordan’s) are iconic, from
The Shot early in the dynasty to
The Last Shot to finish it off. Their six championships are the constant measuring stick against which all successful players and teams are measured in the modern era. The reverence that Jordan and this team receives feels like it can border on idolatry at times; that Jordan, especially, is almost different in kind from any other superstar in NBA history, and it's never appropriate to compare anyone to him.
But while the degree of hype might occasionally go overboard, the all-time great reputation of the Bulls is definitely not unearned. Chicago averaged nearly a 60-win pace over these eleven seasons, and won a round in all of them. They were even able to survive very impressively when Jordan missed most of two regular seasons due to his retirement.
Net rating is a particular testament to Chicago’s greatness. It’s well-documented how dominant the Bulls were in all measures during their second threepeat, where ‘96 and ‘97 remain the top-2 net rating teams in NBA history. The first threepeat wasn’t too shabby either, with ‘92 ranking 6th all time, and ‘91 coming in at #18. This is a nice feather in their cap when I have a category for the top-5 seasons a dynasty recorded in (schedule-adjusted) net rating; if the average of the Bulls’ top 5 seasons were its own separate season, it would rank 7th all-time, above the 73-win Warriors season.
Their championships are also mostly footnote proof, although you can talk about possible missed foul calls on The Last Shot or
the Smith play if you want.
Given all of this, the Bulls would likely be the majority pick for #1, and you may well be surprised that they didn’t land there. As we’ll later explore, this is less of a no-confidence vote for the Bulls as it is a confidence vote for the team above them.
1.San Antonio Spurs, 1993-2017
Head Coach: John Lucas, Bob Hill, Gregg Popovich
Key Players: Tim Duncan, David Robinson, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, Kawhi Leonard, Avery Johnson, Sean Elliott, Vinny Del Negro, Bruce Bowen, Danny Green, LaMarcus Aldridge, Dennis Rodman, Dale Ellis, Tiago Splitter, Derek Anderson, Rasho Nesterovic
Dynasty Rankings: 1st in Seasons (25), 1st in Points (76), 3rd in adjusted Championships (4.97), 5th in adjusted Finals appearances (5.97), 5th in win% (.688), 10th in playoff win% (.598), 3rd in adjusted Net Rating (+6.2), 2nd in Top 5 aNR (+9.2)
Total z-score: 2.28
Were the Spurs a dynasty? Before we answer that question, let me tell a story.
One night, near the lead-up to the 1990-91 NBA season, a couple in Compton were spending a night together.
These Laker fans (I think?) were enjoying the twilight of the Showtime Dynasty; and if they were thinking about potential obstacles their favorite team would face, one of them would be newcomers from San Antonio. The Spurs won 56 games the previous year, and
narrowly lost to Portland in round 2. That’s 2 dynasty points, their first qualifying season since ‘83. The next three seasons saw 55 wins and a first round loss (1 point); 47 wins and a first round loss (-2 points); and 49 wins and a second-round loss (1 point). Based on the rules I established for this series, this ended their ‘90-91 run, as there’s a three-year stretch (‘91-93) with a negative season, and the other two seasons insufficient to make up for it. However, one could easily consider the Spurs’ run as ongoing at this point, starting from ‘90, depending on the ruleset one chooses.
After that ‘93 season, the Spurs barely
ever looked back. That was the start of four straight qualifying seasons, including a 62-win ‘95 and a 59-win ‘96. A single year was spent in the basement, resulting in the acquisition of Tim Duncan, and the Spurs picked right back up. A 56-win ‘98 was the start of
TWENTY straight seasons with a 50-win pace.
Over the next 6-7 seasons, Duncan and co. competed toe-to-toe with the Shaqobe Lakers at the top of the league. The Spurs and Lakers would win three apiece of the next seven titles, and the playoff series score was 3-2 for the Lakers (the two most remembered series seem to be ‘01 and ‘04, both Laker wins, but the Spurs do have ‘99 and ‘03 to their name).
Some people might say that SAS’ 1999 title deserves a footnote, because a lockout shortened the regular season. Those people are wrong, as the most impressive part of the Spurs’ season was the 15-1 playoff run that followed the 50-game regular season; which, while shorter than a normal season, should still be plenty of time to prepare for the playoffs. And besides, even nitpicking that regular season gets a little ridiculous when you think about the fact that they would replicate it eighteen more consecutive times. A better argument for a footnote is 2003, where San Antonio got help getting through the WCF via a Dirk Nowitzki injury (and potentially a prior Chris Weber injury, from Dallas’ side of the bracket).
While Shaqobe went their separate ways, the Spurs kept going. A 63-win ‘06 ended in a crushing 7-game loss to Dallas, but ‘07 ended with a championship, after an impressive playoff run where Round 2 (against Phoenix) was the only competitive (and admittedly, footnote-y) series. '07 is when Dynasty status was finally reached, as '03, '05 and '07 were three championships over five years.
After five more ho-hum seasons (where the Spurs “only” averaged 54 wins, third in the league, and made two conference finals, and won five playoff series, 5th-7th in the league), their new rival became the Heat. They won 58 games in ‘13, and came extremely close to beating the #1 Dynastender, but blew a late lead in Game 6 and lost Game 7 by 7. After a 62-win campaign the next season, they avenged this lost in resounding fashion, winning in five and outscoring Miami by fourteen points
per game. It’s the worst playoff loss LeBron had ever suffered to that point; with the possible exception, of course, of what the Spurs had done to his Cavs team seven years prior.
Now, why did I mention that couple from Compton at the very top? What relevance do they have? Well, the product of the couple, Kawhi Leonard, was all grown up by this time, and earned the Finals MVP in the 2014 series. He would serve as the cornerstone of the team for three more qualifying seasons, but the playoff results weren’t there, and his
rule-changing injury ended up spelling the end of San Antonio’s long run.
That, my friends, is the
definition of a dynasty.
In non-sports terms, the term “dynasty” designates a family of rulers which transcends generations; families that can stay in power while entire lifetimes are lived, where nobody remembers a time when they were not around. The Spurs fit that mold more than any other team in NBA history.
The Spurs' run entirely encapsulates that of the the Shaq
and LeBron Heat, the Shaq
and Gasol Lakers, the Hakeem Rockets and the Durant/Westbrook Thunder. If you include partial overlaps, the Dynasty connects with more than half of the runs covered in this series; four other Dynasties, nine Dynastenders, and thirteen Bridesmaids, ranging from the Jordan Bulls all the way to the current Celtics.
The Spurs’ season-length of their run is the single biggest statistical outlier (4.44 standard deviations above the mean of all the teams on the three lists) out of any of the 8 metrics I used to compile these rankings. The second-biggest outlier is the Spurs’ own point total (3.63), and the third-biggest is LeBron’s Finals appearances (3.44).
If we’re comparing dynasty lengths across sports, then the Spurs have the Cowboys (1966-85) and the Patriots (2001-19) beat. They also barely eke it out over the Yankees’ run from 1920-43. The one MLB team that might top the Spurs is the Yankees from 1994 to the present, if you count their 2015 wild-card loss as a “playoff berth”. It’s worth noting, though, that Bill James’ original standards for baseball dynasties was looser than mine for basketball ones. The Yankees had a four-year run (‘13 to ‘16) with three negative seasons and their one WC loss; that’s a pretty lame way of extending a dynasty, although by James’ standards, it’s possible that it did the trick. I have preliminary NHL results from a similar system that I could compare the Spurs to, but I don't want to spoil those.
Given how ridiculously long the Spurs' Dynasty is, you would think they would flunk every rate statistic in my system. Given how great the aforementioned teams were, surely it would be impossible to sustain as good of a performance as them over 25 seasons…
right?
Well, not necessarily. The Spurs are indeed last among Dynasties in playoff win percentage. That's their "weak link", if a near-60 percent win rate over 24 playoff runs can be considered a weakness. However, their regular season win percentage is greater than that of the Dynasties of the Shaqobe Lakers or Curry Warriors, and their average adjusted Net Rating is only worse than the Jordan Bulls and Bird Celtics. This is over
twenty-five flipping years we're talking about, ladies and gents.
Most people don't think of the Spurs as the greatest Dynasty of all time, if they even think of them as a Dynasty at all. I think the fact that they "only" have five titles plays into it; if 2013, or 2006, or 2004 had gone differently, and Duncan were tied with Jordan in the ring rankings, maybe people would take these guys more seriously. Personally, I wasn't expecting the Spurs to come out on top as I was crunching these numbers. But the sheer quantity of success San Antonio enjoyed makes me inclined to agree that they are, indeed, the #1 Dynasty in basketball history.